Web 2.0 and The Library

A few years ago an interesting thing happened . . . web applications started to evolve. The funny sounding technology known as AJAX became a lot more mainstream. Before you knew it all kinds of cool-looking and cool-acting web sites started popping up that collected data from here and there and everywhere in between. Interesting businesses came of age like myspace, del.icio.us, flickr, facebook and youtube and people were able to connect like they hadn't previously. People were able to submit their own content and share it with the entire world. These new Internet presences collected, organized and aggregated all that stuff like many others in the past had not. They were heralded as pioneers of a new Web.

This was called "Web 2.0". Why Web 2.0? After 2001 or so it appeared that a change was taking place on the Internet. 2001 is seen by many as when the Web 1.0 bubble burst. It was no longer about sock puppets and dot com ventures that would gobble up millions of dollars only to blow it in a few short months. Many believed the web had evolved into something that would ultimately become a platform much like we have in our desktop ( or laptop ) computer's operating system. We would no longer need proprietary software to write letters to Grandma, or call her on the phone, trade photos of the kids, or publish anything to the Internet. It would all be at our fingers and no farther away than the next .com we could type into our browser's address bar. This was because the browser would become the platform and the whole World Wide Web would be our software library.

Quite a concept. Yes? No? Some really fantastic ideas sprung up and it doesn't take much effort to reveal who the leaders of the Web 2.0 charge came to be. In doing so they have set the standard for what is becoming expected of the Web as we now know it. If your new, latest-and-greatest web idea doesn't have features like user generated content, ranking algorithms, social networking, some type of mashup, a rich user experience, blogs, wikis, and tagging then you're probably still operating at the Web 1.0 level. That's just so yesterday. And if you're not operating at that level you're also missing out on a huge demographic. If you want to attract the new breed of users you'll have to understand and incorporate Web 2.0.

Libraries have caught wind of this Web 2.0 phenomenon. They're no stranger to technology. They've been using it for quite some time to catalog, organize, and help those with low barriers of techno-frustration find what they're looking for. But really, with the Internet at people's fingertips, they don't really need to go down to their local library . . . now do they? Actually, they've come to realize they don't. And libraries realize that the Internet is their biggest competition. Not the internet as in the technology behind it, but that which makes up the Internet . . . those places we go, the websites we use to find book and movie reviews, the businesses where we buy books and music and movies and do research.

But are they really seeing the big picture? Is it just about the technology and bells and whistles or is there more to it? I know I have you all set up for a good discussion about this, but I'm just breaking ground here for my Web 2.0 / Tech Tuesday topic. Next week I'll dig a little deeper into this.